Looking Away
When I close my eyes I hear the soft labor of opening:
the magnolias
on my Panhandle street stretching into a wide, wet blue.
I would go back and walk a hundred walks
with no ice or slush to slip through, and
eat kumquats from the neighbors’ tree
without permission, which feels righteous
considering its branches extend
right into the sidewalk.
I resent property
mostly because of fruit and the agony
of having seen tomatoes bulging with summer
rot on a forgotten vine, me
standing on the precipice of yard with
palms pressed to some
imaginary glass.
A small miracle is when I am turning left
and there are no cars coming to make me
wait alone in my restraints
with too much time for sitting quietly
and not enough to look at something
on my phone.
At work when I am clearing the plates
I feel invisible like the ocean
swallowing up our sick,
thinking of the way we refuse to
call a landfill
what it is.
Thinking About a Funny Thing
The yoga instructor is saying something
about acceptance and my body
is becoming the warm elastic of my hamstrings
and hips; I am thinking about a funny thing
that happened today and I want to giggle
but this is a very serious pose and
I would like to appear very serious.
On my back I remember summer
when class was outside and we would all sweat
and just as I would close my eyes before savasana
my vision would go blurry, almost
like when you bend backwards and
then center and
see stars. I’m looking up
at the ceiling and imagining
when sky was in its place and thinking
about a funny thing I said in the car and
suddenly we are all laughing at
some brief communal pain and
the yoga instructor is saying something about acceptance.
So slowly I am learning to love
what is easy and when I bring my knees
to my chest I can feel all these tiny pieces of myself
rushing to my own center like antelopes
to a watering hole and finally there is enough
to go around. I guess
I just thought wholeness would be heavier,
and I lift my hands
Allie Wisniewski is a poet, photographer, naturalist, and dancer, currently residing in Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent most of her life in North Florida and is greatly influenced by the culture and ecology of the southeast. Her work explores our complicated relationship with nature, as well as memory, mundanity, and sense of place. She has been published both digitally and in print by American Forests Magazine, Poetry Super Highway, Utah Life Magazine, Nostalgia Press, and Cardinal Sins Journal, among others. Follow her in cyberspace: @alliewisniewski.